Set Aside Arms Negotiations -- Let's Talk Economics

November 10, 1985|By Louis Rukeyser

NEW YORK — What Ronald Reagan might effectively say to Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva: ''Hey, Gorby, now that we've all had our loud public say about war and peace, how about a few quiet words about economics?

''I know that that one's supposed to be even more impossible for us to discuss, given everything that's been written from Karl Marx on, but you look like a bright young fellow, and they tell me that you may be more attuned to reality than some of the ailing fossils who preceded you.

''Fact is, Gorby, you have an economic problem that's a heck of a lot more serious than your military problem right now -- and the beautiful part is that I may be able to help you solve both.

''The military side is, understandably, what most people have been focusing on -- even those who haven't succumbed to your familiar 'peace now, disarm the West' propaganda. You don't have to be a Communist dupe to worry about nuclear annihilation, and there's nothing conspicuously ideological about wanting our grandchildren to survive.

''But that's just the point, Gorby. You know perfectly well, when all is said and done, that the chances of the United States ever launching an aggressive first strike on your country are, and always have been, zero. And I don't think you're loony enough to push the button on us. We both know that the truly urgent threat comes from some nut like Khadafy or Khomeini -- and containing that kind of proliferation is in the immediate interest of both of us.

''Which takes us to economics. There may have been a time when a military race made some kind of sense for the Soviet Union. It unified a widely diverse country. It brought prestige and superpower status. And it diverted public attention from minor governmental foibles like repression of rights taken for granted even in some of your satellites.

''But there's a new alarm ringing, however faintly, in your country, Gorby, and it's sending a warning that your next major step forward had better be economic.

''Let's face some facts. Your standard of living is not only lower than ours, but the disparity is growing yearly. In the most basic elements of life, your system is flunking: Life expectancy is shrinking in the Soviet Union, not increasing as in the United States. Only one-fifteenth as many Russian families as American families have a car. Soviet housing is a perennial sick joke.

''Nor, under current circumstances, are you anywhere near turning the corner. You yourself tacitly recognized this -- in what has been called the most interesting statistic of 1985 -- when you promised to increase your country's anemic economic growth rate between now and the year 2000 by hardly more than a single pecentage point annually.

''Gorby, this isn't propaganda; this is reality. No wonder the London Economist just reported, 'It could take the Soviet Union a large chunk of the next century to catch up with where the U.S. is now, let alone where it will be then. . . . Russia is a superpower in sheer acreage, in nuclear power and in its people's stubborn powers of endurance, but in nothing else. This is still a one and two-thirds superpower world.'

''So that's what gives us our chance, Gorby. If you will work with me in undertaking the kind of verifiable disarmament that has proved so elusive until now, I will work with you in improving the lot of the Soviet citizen.

''If we merely go on as we have, the day may arrive soon when that much- abused, long-suffering Soviet citizen will no longer give you the option. The economic clock is ticking ominously for your government, and it could be that the disarmament proposals I'm about to make could lead not just to your country's survival but to its prosperity.